Until the World Ends
by Lady Elena Dawson
Summary: In a world where everyone's soulmate is chosen for them, Aria finds herself torn when she falls in love with a man who is not supposed to hold the key to her heart. Will she be able to survive her heart's desires? Dystopian AU.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This story was requested anonymously on my Tumblr (which you can follow at spezria-cobra-awesomeness) as an Ezria AU prompt. I usually don't write dystopian stories, but this one has been fascinating for me and is helping me become a more well-versed writer. I hope you enjoy. (To those who follow me and check up on me frequently, I want you to know that I am currently editing _Where We Are Supposed to Be_ , and still have plans to wrap up any unfinished PLL story on this site. Thank you for sticking with me and my terrible motivation.)**

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 **Until the World Ends**

 **By Lady Elena Dawson**

 **Chapter 1**

From the moment the heart tattoo on Aria's right wrist blinked, Aria was devastated. Not because she wasn't happy to have found her soulmate, but because of who her soulmate was. It was not who she had wanted it to be. Not at all.

The evening that she and her soulmate went on their first official date to plan a future wedding and all the crap that went along with finding your soulmate, Aria scrubbed the tattoo on her wrist until her skin was burning and raw. The black and red ink dribbled down her wrist, looking like she had cut herself. For years she thought the tattoo was a burden. Now that it was washed off after completing its duty, Aria wished it was still there.

She was only eighteen years old. It was early for her to be paired off. The Government usually picked people off in their twenties. Aria knew of a girl who was only fourteen when she was bonded by marriage to a man of thirty-five. Ever since then, Aria questioned the Government more than ever before. Why was it their right to choose who belonged with whom?

In a small way, Aria understood. Ever since the world broke out in a vicious war twenty years before she was born, the American Government had to make some drastic changes. The population had dwindled dangerously low. They needed a sure way to get it up again without risks. So what better way than to pair people up so that it was certain that everyone had a partner to reproduce with? There was no longer the choice of not getting married, of not having kids. If someone refused to have a child, the Government would come in the night and the couple would be gone by the morning, even if one person _wanted_ a child. For a while, no one knew what happened to these people who were plucked out of their beds for standing up for their free will and the other half of the couple who might have been punished with them. Then a group of young boys discovered an unmarked graveyard. After further, and careful, investigations by some brave authorities, they found out that each person had been buried alive—and each were the ones who had refused to follow the Government's wishes.

It was ironic, really, that the Government wanted to increase the population, but decided to pick people off just for not listening to their wants. As soon as this was revealed to the public, the Government used that to their advantage to scare people into doing what they wanted. Their goal was so that each couple had at least one child, and that each couple was chosen by the Government in permanent matrimony. That way, the Government argued, America could return to its former glory once again—not realizing that the people had lost their freedom to be with who they wanted, reproduce with who they wanted. To the Government, there was no longer a risk of people wasting their time finding someone, or maybe never finding someone, and never reproducing.

Now Aria had to marry and reproduce with her best friend since grade school. Holden was a nice guy, but she didn't love him. She couldn't see herself getting into bed with him. She couldn't see them doing more than holding hands. Their first kiss had happened that night and Aria had hated it. Her hazel eyes had burned into his, wondering if he had hated it too. This didn't feel right to Aria, but she didn't say anything. Holden didn't say anything either, except he marked off the calendar for May fifteenth to be their wedding date. Why he was agreeing to this, Aria had no clue. She wished he would have said something. But Aria didn't say anything, so she had to let go of that hypocritical expectation. The next step was choosing a name for their firstborn child, a conversation that they hadn't touched on yet. The idea made Aria's stomach sour, and she wished infertility on herself. Not that that would relieve her, of course. The Government had become proficient in controlling everyone's reproductive system so that it worked as they wanted it to. Aria could have her uterus ripped out right then and she would be given a new one. Biology had come a long way in the past forty years; for better or for worse, Aria didn't know.

At breakfast the next morning, Aria stared at her parents and ignored her plate of food. She never asked them if they had found a way to love each other, or if they were lucky enough to have loved each other the moment their eyes met. Her throat was dry and lips chapped from a sleepless night where she mostly cried into her pillow like when she was fourteen and fighting a crush she had on a boy in her science class. She pretended to finish her food as her parents cleaned up their dishes and parted for work, then Aria dumped her meal, plate and all, into the trash.

After a job interview that Aria felt like she had bombed, Aria hopped on the train home and leaned her forehead against the cool glass window, fighting the urge to cry again. She saw a person around the age of twenty-five standing a few feet in front of her, holding onto the bars with one hand and reading a book in the other. The lucky blonde had the black-and-red tattoo on her wrist. Despite the oppression the country faced, this woman seemed utterly pleased with how her life was going. Aria could tell by the small, pursued smile on her lips, her nicely laundered clothes, perfected makeup, and wrinkle-free forehead. Unconsciously Aria reached up and felt the grooves forming between her eyebrows, trying to smooth them out.

Once the train reached her stop, Aria stood up in preparation to leave, but found herself frozen as the train commenced motion again. Plopping back down, Aria felt that the part of her forehead she'd been leaning on the window was numb. But she liked the numb; she didn't want to return to her new matrimonial life with Holden just yet. Glancing down at her phone, Aria wished for a text from Holden saying, "I'm sorry this is so awkward for us. I wish we could stay friends, but this is what the Government wants. I don't want us to be killed because we want to keep our friendship as only a friendship." Just any acknowledgment that Holden was having just as hard of a time accepting this choice as she was.

Nearing dinner, Aria had been on the train as it looped through its stops four times. By then, there were very few people left dispersed among the train. Aria glanced around and noticed a man sitting a few seats behind her staring out the window with his forehead against the glass, just like Aria had been doing. Out of all the people she had seen coming and going from the train that day, he was the only one who had appeared to be grieving as she was. His right hand reached up and cupped the side of his face to cushion his forehead a bit. Aria couldn't see a tattoo marked on his skin.

Once Aria reached her stop for the fifth time, she stood up, ready to leave this time. Somehow, seeing that man made her feel less alone. Now she didn't feel like the only one grieving over her fate. When she stood up, he glanced up at her for a second, but Aria hadn't noticed.

The next day, Aria went to another job interview she felt she had done better on and rode the train for a few hours just like she had yesterday. Right before her stop, she studied the people on the train again, and was surprised to see the same man as the day before. This time, she noticed the color of his eyes, blue like the sea. Standing up, this time she caught his gaze. A half smile crossed his lips, and Aria returned it. After all, it was the only smile she could muster in how her life was unraveling at that moment.

For the rest of the week Aria repeated her days: breakfast, job interview, a train ride that took her through another uneaten lunch. Each day she noticed the same man in the same spot, studying a different feature of his: his pointed nose, dark and unruly hair, and small amount of stubble covering his chin. She wondered if he had freckles on his nose. By the fifth day, she wished he would look at her for longer than a second.

The weekend forced Aria to break the cycle, as she had plans with Holden to go on a dinner date followed by a movie date followed by a family meeting between their two families. Aria wondered if the man noticed she wasn't on the train, or if he was stuck with his soulmate like she was all weekend.

Come Monday, Aria didn't have a job interview, but she rode the train regardless. Her heart picked up in speed when she noticed the man again. Rather than wait until right before her stop, Aria turned around and stared at him as soon as he sat down. After a minute, his eyes shifted and met hers. They kept that stare for a solid minute before Aria broke it, turning back around and feeling flushed.

It took Aria another two days to grow and nurture the courage to ask to sit with him. Unbeknownst to Aria, it had taken the man the same amount of courage to say yes. Both were painfully aware of what might happen if they decided to interact with each other. So many things could go wrong, but they wanted some aspect of their lives in their control.

His name was Ezra, and Aria would grow to love that name and the person it associated with even if it meant she'd meet her dirty grave early. At least then she would be at peace knowing that she had loved.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

When Aria first sat down next to the man, she could feel her goosebumps shiver. She wondered what caused her heart beat to race so fast: could it be because she can now confirm that he does have freckles on his nose? "My name's Aria," she introduced herself, but didn't give him her hand. She didn't want him to notice her tattoo was missing just like his.

"Ezra," he said, also without offering his hand. "Do you ride this train often?"

Aria couldn't control the smile that pricked at the corners of her lips, and for reasons she did not understand, she blushed. "Every day," she answered, though she could have given a more complex answer by adding, "But you know that, right? We see each other on this train all the time. We share a soundless glance, but I think we've been wanting to speak for a while now."

But Aria only left it at "Every day."

"Are you heading home?" She wished he would stop asking questions that would only lead to small talk and nothing more.

"Yes," Aria said. "But it's not for a few stops," she lied.

Despite this normally awkward situation they were in, Aria felt completely comfortable. "Are _you_ heading home?"

Ezra's answer spiced up the mundaneness of their chatter. "No, I'm heading out to work. The hours are great. You get to sleep in, but not work too late…" Feeling the government's invisible eyes on him, Ezra halted before he said too much. He knew what would happen if he became too close to this girl. But her eyes were memorizing, a shimmery green, and he felt like he would feel buried alive for the rest of his life if he walked away from this conversation.

The girl next to him had a sweetness on her smile. He wanted to call it an innocence, but he could see her hiding her right wrist. "What do you work as?" she dared to ask.

After this answer, Aria would have known more about a stranger than she ever had in her eighteen years of living. "An English professor at the Rosewood Institution of Education," he replied. And just like that, a connection.

"English, huh? I love reading, and writing. Going through primary school, my friends mostly complained about it. Thought it was boring to read _Jane Eyre_ and discuss the ideas of free will." Realizing her reply was on the cusp of controversy, Aria pursed her lips and pretended she did not say anything that could be construed for social commentary.

In a way, Ezra could read her mind, and knew she did want him to walk on a tightrope with her across that conversation. "What do your friends think now?"

Aria shrugged her shoulders. "They've all moved on now."

Ezra wanted to ask why, but then he remembered her wrist, and he understood what she was feeling, to be picked off into a commitment the others were not chosen for yet. To give up the lives they wouldn't get to lead because they were not unfortunate enough to get chosen so soon. Ezra had fought the social institution for so long, having skirted his way through secondary school in three years instead of four, until the government sent their last threatening notice and he was forced to get hitched to Maggie within the month.

But with that education came a career many people chosen before the age of twenty never got to experience. He glanced at Aria's hidden wrist again, wondering what future waited for her. If her soulmate was the same age as her, then most likely they would go into a business together. If it didn't take off, their lives would be more stressful than most of the country's. If he was older, she would most likely become a housewife. It was an unwritten rule that marriage equated to the end of a school career. After all, how could one dedicate their entire self to marriage and children with schoolwork in the way?

"Friends are overrated anyway," Ezra said in a weak attempt to diffuse the serious turn their conversation seems to want to take. "Do you have a favorite book?"

Aria pondered it, scratched her head. "No, I don't think so. I've just read and enjoyed so many."

Rather than be prompted by her, Ezra responded, "I used to be like you, but when I started teaching I realized some books were just as fun to teach as they were to read. Now my favorite is _A Farewell to Arms_."

"Hemingway." Aria nodded in approval. "Though that's a little tragic, isn't it?"

"A little?" Ezra scoffed. "The man loses everything in the end. I'd say it's a nightmare."

"Just like how we're living now?" Aria wanted to say. But instead she kept to the mild topics, feeling the threat of Big Brother looming over her. "Why do you like teaching it, then?"

It was a question no one had asked him before. The train came to his stop and he told her he'd have his response by tomorrow. Aria whispered a goodbye and watched him step off the train, awestruck. She didn't know why the conversation had stunned her so much, but it had changed her in a way she couldn't quite explain.

What she managed to come up with by the time she got to her stop was this: She felt different. Strange. Awoken.

…

At home that evening, Holden stopped by and caught Aria reading _A Farewell to Arms_. "Ready to go?" he asked her, and for a few moments Aria just stared at him, blinking and clueless.

Then she remembered: He was taking her out to dinner tonight, to a fancy French place she'd been meaning to go to for weeks.

"Oh. Yes." She cleared her throat and hoped her obliviousness didn't give way too much. "I lost track of time a bit. Just let me throw on something nicer and we'll get going."

The dinner was nice because the food was delicious and she was with a friend. But what made it drastically less than perfect was the situation that prompted the date. Holden kissed her before dessert and Aria could feel her stomach sour. She couldn't wait to bite into the chocolate lava cake they'd ordered and let it scorch her mouth, just so she could remind herself that she _was_ human.

Truth be told, she didn't want to feel this way around Holden. She still thought fondly of him and their memories together. But ever since her tattoo swirled down the drain, she was forgetting that _he_ was human as well. She couldn't blame herself, though, for confusing him for something less animate. It was like he was a puppet. A marionette constructed by the government's laws. The Holden she grew up with was daring, rash, outspoken. Ever since his tattoo washed off, his true self had been pulled down with it. And if it was because of fear or acceptance, Aria wasn't sure.

While Holden chattered on about wedding plans Aria wished she was courageous enough to deny, her thoughts wandered to Ezra, the man on the train. She could sense something going on with their souls; their exchanged words stirred them. What they felt compelled to keep under wraps poked at them. She and this stranger had so much they wanted to say. Why they felt that around each other was still a mystery to her, one she was willing to solve.

The next day she went to another interview, hopped on the train, and sought out Ezra. It took only two seconds for her heart to plummet: he wasn't there. He didn't get on on a later stop, either. Rather than let her mind be captured by her wounded heart, she got off at her stop an hour earlier than she usually did. At least at home she could occupy her mind with chores, making dinner, and dealing with her family.

The next morning, she told herself to have zero expectations. She went to a follow-up interview (her first one, which was kind of exciting) and climbed onto the train: and there he sat. See, she told herself as her heart heaved a sigh. No expectations made things happen.

"How are you?" she asked as she sat down, but her heart that had been fluttering in anticipation skipped a couple beats after she saw his face. It was obvious he was not in a great mood, but she couldn't pin what negative emotion he was feeling. Sadness? Anger? Grief? She could feel that kindling in her soul again, and after another glance at his pale complexion, sullen, sunken eyes, and dark circles, she pinpointed the root cause: sorrow.

"Is it about…" Aria was somehow courageous enough to touch his plain right wrist. "This?"

Ezra didn't make a sound, just nodded his head, and Aria could feel herself opening up rather than shutting herself down. Tugging at her sleeve, she showed him her clean skin. "I feel it too," she whispered. She didn't feel like she was on the train anymore. "Every day."


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Thank you all for the reviews! I'm ecstatic to see so many of you excited to see where this story is going to go. Without further ado, here is chapter three!**

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 **Chapter 3**

If citizens were allowed to say what they were thinking to each other, most would ask "Who did you get stuck with?" But once Aria fell back to Earth and felt her heightened emotions trickle away, she no longer had the power to be brusque and rash with a stranger. Especially a stranger that was hurting, a stranger like Ezra. Rather than bring up the laws of soulmates in America, Aria asked him the simplest question in humankind, one that was vague enough so that he could speak about whatever he wanted to speak about: "What's wrong, if you don't mind my asking?"

It restarted the conversation that had begun when Aria had seen him and felt his sorrow enter hers. She was no longer talking about what she (and possibly he) felt every day she was engaged. She wanted to pretend like she had never brought it up; it was not her place to.

Following along, Ezra lied, "I got an angry parent at school the other day. Demanded to know why I was supposedly grading their kid so harshly. Wiped me out." She was a stranger anyway, he told himself. No reason to tell the truth—even though she had been right before.

Like most of Aria's life, the conversation whooshed on by and it was onto the next part of it. "So, why do you enjoy teaching _A Farewell to Arms_?" She wanted to phrase it, "You gave me your word the other day, now it's time to keep your promise," but in her mind she was afraid that would come off too flirtatious, that there were multiple cameras on the train recording every word and gesture she made, waiting for her to screw up.

Though Ezra wasn't much for conversation since yesterday's disaster, Aria made him feel less upset, like he had no reason to hide how he really felt. "Well," he said with a drawn-out sigh, "it's not so much teaching just that. It's teaching in general. Opening up people's minds. Seeing the awe on their faces when they understand something. Some teachers don't realize just how much power they have—to make or break a kid."

Aria pushed her hair behind her ear, which jingled the multiple bracelets decorating her right wrist. She tried to hide the irrational shame by covering up what caused it in the first place: a commitment she was not ready to make, but was guilt-tripped into. When her tattoo first faded away meeting up with Holden, she ran home to tell her parents in tears. "I'm going to SCAD in the fall!" she nearly screamed at them, though she felt weak, defeated.

"But honey…" Aria's mother, Ella, used the tone she always used when she didn't think it was a good idea to support her child. "If you choose college over Holden, you know what will happen to us. And you…you don't want that to happen to us, right?"

If it wasn't for the sour knot of guilt balled up in her head like a tumor, she would probably have risked everything to go to SCAD. But she didn't. That same night she cancelled SCAD's offer. Let herself live, and—what she had forgotten in her perseverance—her parents' live. Of course, parents weren't typically harmed by the government if their child refused to be made a couple. But her parents' paranoia made her remember: Holden _would_ have been. And the fact that Aria hadn't even _thought_ of Holden made Aria feel sick whenever she remembered that day.

"You're right," Aria said after a few seconds too long of pondering. "Absolutely right. Primary school sucked for me, all twelve years of it. The teachers didn't seem to care at all. But secondary school—college… I was so ready to go. To meet adults who actually cared about helping kids achieve what they wanted to."

When Aria looked at Ezra's face, she was taken aback by his blue eyes again. They seemed deeper, more profound. And he couldn't stop staring at her: how her hazel eyes seemed greener, murkier, swirling colors mimicking the turbulence she had barred inside. "Want to go somewhere?" she whispered. When Aria pressed her lips together after letting those words escape, she had a miniature crisis. Had she really just said that? And why did she say that? Where would they go anyway? Would he say yes knowing the costs?

Those eyes, Ezra kept thinking, even after she proposed hopping off the train. They reminded him of something: the earth. Stubborn, even when it faces storms. If he could read minds, he would know that she thought his were like the sea. Bottomless, open, but mostly full of the unknown. And that wasn't so unlike him; besides teaching, he was never certain of anything else he was doing with his life. He went along with the tides. She stood her ground until it was forcefully swept out from under her.

"Yes," he finally said after staring for too long. "Let's go somewhere."

…

They saw a Starbucks at the next stop and stopped in. It wasn't that crowded, making Aria a little nervous. It seemed like too open of a space to get to know an acquaintance more deeply. But then she realized that both she and Ezra no longer had their tattoos, and everyone would assume they were together.

"Soy latte, please," Aria ordered. "Three sugars."

Ezra had never ordered from Starbucks, and did not have a regular order in mind. "A regular coffee, please. Two creams, two sugars." It must have made sense to the cashier, because they rung it up with no issue.

"Three sugars?" Ezra laughed as they sat down with their orders. "Have a sweet tooth?"

Aria shrugged. "I guess. The problem with coffee in general is the sugar doesn't do as much as I wish it did. So even this is still a little bit too bitter for me."

"So why do you drink it?"

Aria smiled as she brought her cup to her lips. "Let's just say I have more of a caffeine tooth than a sweet tooth."

They fell into a silence that most would consider awkward, including Aria herself, but before her brain could panic, she noticed that there _was_ no awkwardness. She had an inherent urge to check her wrist to see if her tattoo was wearing off, before rapidly remembering that it had been gone for a while now. Ezra wasn't her soulmate—but her soul felt like he may be.

"Let's see, I started drinking coffee when I was a freshman in high school." Aria nodded her head and couldn't stop grinning (and cringing) from the awkward memories. "My friend Spencer was really into it and she dared me to try it and I thought it tasted so bad, I started coughing and some of it came up my nose… Not really a pleasant first experience, but it somehow didn't stop me from getting the addiction."

Ezra chuckled along with her. "God, how could you get over that? Ever since I had Coca Cola shot out of my nose, I could never drink it. Seriously, I get a little nauseous when I'm around people drinking it. Like I'm just waiting for them to spurt it out of their nose too."

Suddenly a woman stomped past them, stopping at their table long enough to glare at them and growl, "How could you two be so happy when we're forced to have sex with people we can't even choose to love?" The moment was so fast, all Aria could see were her burning blue eyes and whoosh of blonde hair. The two fell silent and pale, at first not certain what had gone on. Then Aria looked past Ezra's head and saw a man in his mid-fifties stand up and dash after the woman, who couldn't have been more than twenty-five. "Come on, Darla," Aria could hear the man say with a smoker's voice. "I'm only asking for two kids. Two kids I've wanted all my life."

"In your dreams!" Darla shrieked, slamming the door and starting her car. "You can't tell me to have children I don't want to have. It wouldn't be _you_ carrying them around for nine months!"

As the woman's car screeched away, Aria felt cold and hot. She could _feel_ this woman's anger, her pain, her fear. She'd been feeling it too; she and Holden had recently had the children discussion, but Aria had managed to get out without adding much depth to it.

When she and Ezra met their gazes after the encounter, they instantly looked away. It was the first time they had felt awkward around the other. The woman had assumed they were together, but they were not. They could never have discussions of children or marriage. They couldn't even go out on an innocent date.

"I'm sorry," Aria eventually said, placing her shaky hands on her lap. "This was a bad idea."

Unbeknownst to Aria, that night became the biggest decision Ezra had ever made. For almost a full minute after Aria's apology, he just sat there, wrinkles in his brow, thinking, thinking, _thinking_. Such strenuous thinking between reason and heart. His logic told him to respond with "You're right, we should have never let our relationship get beyond strangers," but his heart said, "We should do this again some time." And then, without much thought, his mind picked out the lesser of two evils and his lips moved as in to say, "We should do this again sometime."

Unbeknownst to Ezra, that night was also the biggest decision Aria had ever made. "Yes. Yes… We should."


End file.
